


With Stars Strung in His Hair

by SnugglePuppyBoi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blind Character, Gen, Ghost Narrator, Inhuman Character, Original Character(s), Short One Shot, Vaguely Fantasy Themed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 04:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnugglePuppyBoi/pseuds/SnugglePuppyBoi
Summary: Every morning he sits in front of the mirror and begins the laborious process of combing out, brushing, and then adorning his hair.Every morning I watch him from the corner of the room, silent and unseen and so very, very alone.





	With Stars Strung in His Hair

Every morning he sits in front of the mirror and begins the laborious process of combing out, brushing, and then adorning his hair. 

Every morning I watch him from the corner of the room, silent and unseen and so very, very alone.

Most days I can't leave my corner. There's a sort of pressure holding me in place, hovering just above the floor, back pressed against the wall. I can't really _feel_  the wall, but I know it's there. My right arm is pinned back, twisted behind me. My legs are splayed.

The same position I died in however many years ago. It's hard to keep track, especially in a little windowless room like this one. I never tried before he'd shown up, but he's given me back a sense of structure with his consistent schedule. Every day is the same for him, like watching an automaton running through its sequence. 

In the mornings he dresses, sits at the tiny desk facing the crescent-shaped mirror hug on the wall, and fixes his hair. When he's done, he sits there, motionless, until a knock on the door calls him away. Before he returns, the maids in charge of the lower floor switch their shifts and come inside to do a quick tidying of his room. He comes back, removes his jewelry, curls in his bed, and weep himself to sleep.

I don't know much about him. From what the maids say, no one does. Rumors abound in place of facts. The bastard offspring of the late king and his daughter-by-blood, the imprisoned former princess Altri, kept safe under the care of his brother and uncle, King Isdin. A disgraced foreign assassin who was spared his life in return for his service to the crown. A poor beggar boy with a pretty voice who caught the eye of the Queen Consort, either as a replacement for her sons lost in the war or a prized songbird to keep her company while her husband is away. A child of the goddess of quiet things too weak to live among his mother's people and instead stashed away in the safety of a cell in the once-dungeon of Smoke. 

There's even disagreement on what his  _name_  might be. Unable to keep my morbidity in check (and unsure why I should bother considering my current state) I've decided to ignore whatever his real name might be and name him for myself. Bel.

The name will make sense in time if it doesn't already.

I'm not sure if this is only my imagination, but I feel someone listening to me when I allow myself to sink back into my thoughts. If you are, I intend to tell you what I know of Bel so far and why any of this matters to me. It won't be a terribly long or exciting story, but my life was filled with more than enough of those. I'm sure some young silvertongue has taken my old stories as their own by now. Made them better, even. 

I wonder if you'll take Bel's story from me as well. 

I shouldn't bother with thoughts like that. Not now.

He's sitting in front of him mirror now, staring straight ahead into the clouded glass and pinning the silver and gold chains of his hair piece in place. I'm not sure how he does it so perfectly, deft fingers twisting and twining night black hair this way and that, securing the tiny, round clips along the chains' lengths in just the right positions. The end result is always stunning. A nearly perfect map of the stars over Smoke with each constellation readily recognizable. I've noticed it shifts gradually. I think it moves to match the real life sky, just a bit different every day.

The maids are torn over whether he's truly blind. In the beginning I too shifted my view on it easily and often. On some days he seems to navigate the room as easily as a sighted man and is tripped up by the littlest of changes the next. Why the mirror? Why the ritual of staring straight into its surface if nothing could be seen there? 

Comfort in repetition, I think. Even I find myself rerunning my final thoughts and feeling a sort of peace in my dying that wasn't present the first time. 

Where he goes every morning isn't as much a mystery. To entertain the nobles, usually those pledged to the Queen Consort or the relatives of her family line. Sometimes King Isdin calls him privately. Bel never seems to prefer any of them over the others, never returns happier after his time with one in particular. 

As far as I know, what he does for them is sing. I've never heard him sing, never heard him speak or make any sound except soft sobbing or a muffled grunt of pain when one of the maids moves the furniture and he stumbles into it. The maids who've heard him seem of the opinion his voice is pleasant, but not spectacular. Definitely not worthy of their beloved King and their Heroine Queen. 

Gossiping maids aren't well known for their emotionally honest reactions. I like to think my Bel has made them all feel a touch green.

The candles have burnt down quicker than usual today, making it hard to see Bel's face, but the stars in his hair twinkle in the dying light. The maids have been giving him the broken or bad candles. I think it started as an attempt to see if he would notice and has turned into a convenient place to leave them. I'll be left in the dark soon. It seems that, despite my lack of physical eyes, I'm still bound by the rules of human eyesight. 

Being dead is inconveniencing.

He's staring into the mirror when the knock comes. He doesn't flinch or start, just takes a slow, deep breath and rises to his feet. He's dressed in his usual outfit, white, gauzey robes that drag across the stone floor when he walks and cover nearly every inch of him, save his hands, face, hair, and occasionally, the pink-tongued glimpse of his soles when he steps. 

It takes him the same number of steps to reach the door every time. I'm not sure why I've gotten in the habit of counting, other than that my mother had told me once about an uncle of hers who lost his sight and had to rely on numbering off his steps to make it around his home. I wonder if Bel uses that method?

He's out of the door, silent but for the rustle of cloth on cloth and the soft click of the latch. He won't be back for some time and I won't know where he'll have gone until the maids switch shifts. 

Excuse the shift in tone, but... now is as good a time as any. You see, there are some players to this story you haven't met yet.

Before there was Bel, before my ghost was trapped here, there was another Bel. Two others, really. 

The first Bel you probably know of. Odd-Eyed Bel, the mortal daughter of the Immortal King of Catriss whose death rended Catriss into the cities of Smoke and Ash. When the cities split, so did Bel. She was captured, murdered, and her body cut in half, parts buried throughout the two cities to link them together and protect them. Her eyes were buried beneath what would one day become to castles of Smoke and Ash, the seeds to our sovereignty. 

The second Bel you probably don't know. Not unless you worked in the castle of Smoke the same years I did. Her name wasn't Bel, but we all called her that. Odd-eyed, like the girl whose blood fed our newborn independence. One gray and one brown, though the left and right switched from Odd-Eyed Bel's. 

This Bel was very nearly my wife. A beautiful, sweet young thing working in the city to pay off a debt her family owed. I was taken with her immediately and, after a few months of pursuit, she seemed just as taken with me. It wasn't a secret or subtle romance. From the beginning until the day she finally yielded, I was the laughing stock of the servant's social circuit. It was worth it, of course.

Until my sweet young thing's real husband caught word of what was going on and—

—well, I'm sure you can figure out what happened then. I ended up bleeding to death in this godforsaken room, pierced from enough jabs of his knife that I was more hole than cloth, as the expression goes. My body was found a week later and presumably delivered back to my family for burial. I wouldn't know. The furthest I've gotten from this corner since my death was on the few days where I managed to make it to the doorway.

And then we have my Bel. Not Odd-Eyed or odd-eyed, but certainly with odd ones that can seem both blind to the world and aware of all of it. And like the Bels before him, he's tied to death, sharing a room with a dead man as he is. 

I never said my reasoning for the name was the best. 

Time is so odd, when I'm speaking to you like this. It doesn't flow at the pace of speech or writing. Already I can hear the girls' voices outside the hall, muffled giggles and half-barked reprimands. I wonder what hearing it must be like? Are you pulled half out of time, half into dreaming too? Or is it just a few minutes distraction to you? The whispering of the dead the background noise to your day.

I'm going to close my eyes, for just a bit. I'm not quite sure how it works. I don't dream, I don't sleep, but sometimes, for a short stretch of time I can

                                                                                    cease

                                                                                        to

                                                                                           exist.

 

* * *

 

 

The click of the door opening brings me back to reality. Bel steps in, moving swiftly to the desk and starting to undo the stars from his hair. I can move a little more than usual, shifting into a more natural sitting position. The maids have relit the candles and, somewhere in the back of my mind, a woman's voice remarks that Bel has had an audience with King Isdin again. I shouldn't be so happy to hear the clear distaste in her voice.

Removing the adornments takes less time than putting them on, but it's still a lengthy process. Bel's hands tremble slightly, and I wonder if today has been particularly hard on him. Out of character for him, but it's not as if he's really a clockwork toy. He's human. 

When his hair is free he brushes it out again, tying it behind him and changing from his robes into a pair of dark cloth pants and matching shirt. He hides himself under his blankets, curling into the usual ball. His breathing is louder, unsteadier. He'll be crying himself to sleep soon, just like—

"Bel is a stupid name," your voice whispers, soft and cool and hollow and trembling all at once. I freeze and you huff out an almost-laugh.

I look at you and you're looking back, sitting upright in the little bed with your body still curled beneath you. 

I don't know what you are. Your skin is a black dark enough to dim the rest of the room, drinking in the candlelight and somehow making itself both darker and more apparent from it. I can't see if you have a mouth or nose, and where your eyes should be is instead two small, captive stars, burning a brilliant blue and gold. 

"Bel is a stupid name," you repeat and, if you do have a mouth, it doesn't move. You tilt your head.

"...but I suppose it isn't the most senseless thing I've been called."

You look down at your body. Emotion radiates from you. I can feel the touch of bitterness and curiosity against what should be my skin. Another almost-laugh leaves you.

"I need to rest," you say, softly, almost indulgently. "Perhaps in the morning I'll name you as well."

You disappear and leave just the other, fragile you.

The crying begins. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, advice, or questions, please leave a comment. I would really appreciate it.


End file.
